Creating space: Districts choose modulars/portables to help accommodate reinstated class sizes and compositions

Creating spaCe

Districts choose modular/portables to help accommodate reinstated class sizes and compositions

By Shayna WiWierSki

ASupreme Court decision means that a collective agreement from 2002 will be restored. In November 2016, the Supreme Court of Canada made a decision that the Government of B.C. was required to reinstate the class size limits, class composition provisions and staffing ratios that were unconstitutionally removed in 2002. Effective for the 2017/18 school year, the limits for primary classes are 20 students for kindergarten and 22 students for Grades 1 to 3. Class compositions for intermediate and secondary classes vary from district to district.

Composition is generally in reference to the number of special needs students in the class, as well as the number of teacher assistants, counsellors, and librarians per student in a school.

“Composition plays a huge role as there are students that require more attention than others,” says Tristan Schaufler, director of facilities, transportation, and capital projects for the Langley School District #35. “When you look at the composition of classrooms, you can have students that function on a common level, and based on that, they would be considered one body, whereas if the student requires more support, they may count as two students. So, what happens is you may have a class that doesn’t have the same number of students, but the amount of the workload would be equivalent with a classroom that has a different composition.”

As a result of the reinstated class size limits, districts are finding that they need more classroom support to meet the demand. Schaufler says that each district does an assessment so that they can realize that in certain cases they can absorb the classroom size and composition, and in other times, they can’t. As a result, they end up looking at creating more classroom space.

A lot has happened since 2002, and other dynamics playing in is the slow decline of students in more urban areas because of the cost of living, meaning that districts would have had to consolidate schools.

The delivery of one section being backed into the site to make ready for the crane. One section of a modular being lifted by crane to be swung into place.

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and the cost of running the school, including the location, would make it a suitable candidate to be closed and the students transferred. There were lots of consolidations and closures since 2002 across the province, which now multiplied the problem that’s existing today in terms of creating space,” says Schaufler.

As a result, the province has provided districts with the Classroom Enhancement Fund, announced in May 2017, which gives a $150-million funding boost to the education system. The $150 million is in

Our members are BC’s most almost 60 years. Learn more at RCABC.ORG addition to the $180 million announced in this year’s budget, bringing the total to $330 million. The funding will provide for the hiring of 1,500 new teachers, adding to the approximately 1,000 previously announced in the budget. This fund will also provide for creating the space that is required for the influx of students.

Schaufler says that his department looked at every school in the district and ended up creating 30 more classrooms that were currently existing for other

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Ask more from your roofer, ask for an RCABC member. portable classrooms in the district, which currently has 49 schools.

“As the budgets came in, they were expecting districts to hire new teachers and additional teaching and support staff, so we had to create the space that was required,” he says. “There are different ways to go about that, and one of them is bringing in portables.”

Chuck Morris, director of facilities for the Saanich School District, says they added four new portable classrooms to their 18-school district. Two were funded by the ministry and the other two they funded themselves. Each portable holds up to a maximum of 30 students, which fits with the new class size composition, and are around 960 square feet with their own heating system. He says that there is a bit of prep work involved with installing the modular as you need to prepare the ground in a certain fashion.

“You need to remove a foot or so of the ground and bring in other material and compact it. You also apply for building permits,” says Morris, who adds that they put out an RFP to a number of companies in the area and the winning bid came from Freeport Industries, based out of West Kelowna. The other company providing portables and modulars to the area is Boxx Modular, which delivers modular solutions through Britco.

Luckily, Schaufler’s district put the order in early and they received them at the end of this past June. Since the composition rule was just reinstated, he says that a lot of other districts were waiting and ended up not getting portables since the manufacturers couldn’t keep up. Morris adds that his district was happy to receive four portables as they were able to convert quite a bit of space in schools, but that may change down the road.

“The student population is starting to climb once again,” says Morris. “Watching our growth over the next few years and working with our long-range facilities plan, we may need to add new modulars and plan for additions to accommodate students if the trend continues.” n